


Working Girl (Her Real Business is Secrets)

by xylodemon



Category: Clue (1985)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A motor rumbles in the distance, slightly louder than the thunder rolling overhead. She smooths out the line of her dress, bends over the hood of her car just as a pair of headlights flare through the wet shadows at the end of the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Working Girl (Her Real Business is Secrets)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://fandom_stocking.livejournal.com/profile)[**fandom_stocking**](http://fandom_stocking.livejournal.com/) 2012.
> 
> Warnings: vague discussion of prostitution, related to Miss Scarlet's line of work.

She isn't surprised when her car sputters to a stop on the side of the road. In terms of bad luck, it's been that kind of year.

She calls her main business an escort service, but it's nothing more than a common brothel, a few tired girls performing tired tricks for fidgety johns with sweaty hands and greedy, shifty eyes, men with more money than sense and list of fairly predictable excuses: high-stress jobs, overbearing mothers, frigid girlfriends, unhappy wives. She puts up a very elegant front -- Baroque music, champagne and silk sheets, menus printed on parchment, a client register full of pseudonyms and lies -- all the things men are foolish enough to equate with style and money and class, but the veneer is starting to chip, has been wearing thin around the edges for months, and supply is currently higher than demand.

The rent on her hotel just went up. The cop she pays off has been quietly hinting that he'd like a raise. Recent police busts on other red-light joints have made some of the regular punters nervous, afraid to get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, have their indiscretions splashed across the front page of the gossip rags, and the steady influx of boys just home for Korea hasn't quite managed to balance out the books. Enlisted men might have healthy appetites, but they want everything cheap, rarely have loose paper to burn.

Her other business is lucrative, far more lucrative than the routine sex she sells by the hour, but it's unreliable to an extreme, dependent on things like trade agreements and government contracts. Pentagon leaks and dirty politicians. Peons with wages thinner than their debts. It leaves too much to chance, hinges on too many factors out of her control. Like most madams, she spent close to a decade on her back before she saved enough to branch out on her own; she hated every single day of it, and she'll be damned if she ends up getting fucked again.

A motor rumbles in the distance, slightly louder than the thunder rolling overhead. She smoothes out the line of her dress, bends over the hood of her car just as a pair of headlights flare through the wet shadows at the end of the road. 

"Want a lift?" the guy asks.

"Yes, please." The car smells of pipe tobacco. Leather and damp wool. She offers him her working-girl smile, the one that says she could be persuaded to show him a good time. She doubts he has anything she could possibly want, but she's learned over the years that men are far easier to handle when they think you're for sale.

"Wait a minute, let me look at that," he says, when she flashes the address on her dinner invitation. "That's where I'm going. I got a letter like this," and that -- that _is_ a surprise. He doesn't look like the blackmail type, too scattered and frumpy, too vaguely bookish, but the business has taught her that the quiet ones often have interesting peccadilloes, kinks they can scarcely stomach in the cold light of day. He just might have something she could use after all.

The Hill House is old money, the kind of thing you never see in the rougher, redder parts of D.C. Stained-glass windows, dark wood and heavy stone, crystal chandeliers, too much lacquer and carving and gilt. Her heels make sharp, staccato sounds on the parquet floor, and the sleek walls carry voices like the horn on a record player. She recognizes Yvette as Wadsworth conducts them into the library, that fake accent she's grown tired of hearing, for all the money it has made her over the years. It's another surprise, a sudden sting at the base of her spine, and she doesn't recover in time, can't stop herself from arching an eyebrow as Yvette blandly offers her a drink.

She tried to be careful when she first set up shop, bribing all the right people, playing things close to the vest, speaking delicately when she did spread the word. When the blackmail demands started to arrive, she immediately suspected the snitch was someone on the inside, but she never once considered Yvette. Her hotel is full of girls with grudges and sad stories and extra expenses, with drunken fathers and sick mothers. Criminal boyfriends. Deadbeat ex-husbands. Little brothers they're putting through school. Yvette came to D.C with the clothes on her back and a clean slate, had left everyone and everything from her old life behind.

"Ah, Dinner," Wadsworth says, his tone a little too cultured, his back a little too stiff. She wonders what _his_ game is, if he's an innocent bystander or an important piece of the puzzle, or if he lingers somewhere in the middle, spilling secrets he doesn't realize he knows, moving packages he's never been tempted to open, taking phone messages he doesn't bother to question. She wouldn't need much to get it out of him -- the prim, fussy ones usually fold with just a few gentle words and suggestive touches -- but she doesn't have the time or a feasible way to get him alone.

She considers the other guests over dinner, and again after Wadsworth airs all their dirty laundry in the study, hiding her thoughtful, narrowed eyes behind soft clouds of smoke. She has had dirt on Colonel Mustard for months, under a name nearly as fake as the one he's using right now, but pictures are better than the strongest alias. He's a military man, and high enough in the ranks that he'd have access to sensitive military information. The remaining four don't look like much on the surface -- a black widow, a deviant shrink, a federally-employed homosexual, a sleazy Senator's equally sleazy wife -- but they all have government contacts, and they all have reputations to maintain, embarrassing secrets they'd rather keep buried.

"In your hands, you each hold a lethal weapon," Mr. Boddy says, his voice heavy with cognac.

She tests the weight of the candlestick against her palm, traces its sharp edges with the pad of her thumb. Wadsworth could still have his uses, but Mr. Boddy will have to go, and possibly the cook. It won't be easy with all these potential witnesses around; she'll need to find five minutes alone with Yvette, see if Yvette is familiar with the layout of the house.

Murder is such a messy business. It's a good thing she isn't wearing her favorite dress.


End file.
